I’ve been traveling! Sorry for the un announced absence, but due to personal security I don’t like to reveal my travels before they happen. But I have a couple of cool posts coming up as soon as I can find time to put them together. Evelyn has also become a major handful, she is crawling in full force and walking along furniture. So I am constantly chasing her when she gets into unsafe zones.

Here’s a sneak peek from our travels:

and now for your regularly scheduled programming:

This week is about Enlisted vs. Officer wives.

I really don’t have a lot of experience with officer wives. I think as military wives they are held to a higher standard. They sometimes are asked to participate in events and help put together events involving all of the wives in the command/unit/shop. My grandmother was an officer wife. She has told me stories about having to entertain other officers and commanders. I think she really enjoyed it though.

When we were in Okinawa I would babysit for some officer families and I didn’t find them that much different than me. They still worry about their husbands when they are away, they still make dinner for their kids, they still have dishes in their sink.

But I have heard horror stories about wives pulling rank (not just officer wives), using their husbands higher rank in the military to try to get favoritism, thankfully I never saw that.

But we have only spent 2.5 of our years together at an actual base, or even stationed near a large number of other Military, and for 9ish months of that 2.5 years Paul was deployed so I didn’t interact much with command functions or such.

Being an enlisted wife I certainly have a bit more experience there. But along with all wives (not just military) they can be catty and gossipy. Have you seen Desperate Housewives? I like a bit of juicy gossip just as much as the next girl though. But they aren’t all that bad, and my experience is they aren’t as bad as the internet makes them look. Not all wives cheat, not all sit around and talk shit all day, not all of them are fat and lazy with 1/2 dozen kids.

I really can’t say to benefits to each, I guess I think, to me, we are all equal-ish, officer wives may get nicer housing on base and their husbands may get slightly higher paychecks than mine. But they still get deployed, they still have to work duty weekends, they still may get late night phone calls when one of their Marines has screwed up.

Currently we are living several hundred miles from the nearest military family so I have no direct communication with the officer side of things and command sponsored events, I really only know just the few wives that live closest to me.

I am sure it’s because of the situations I have been put in, but I have made some amazing friends that are military wives. I think it takes a special breed of woman to marry a military man. Life is so unpredictable. You have to be strong, patient, flexible, and a sense of humor is a must. Bonus traits would be a love for travel, trying new things, and independence, because you need to be able to pay your bills, run your household, and open that jar of pickles, should your husband deploy.

But I must mention, the officers club in Okinawa had the best brunch in the whole wide world. We only had the one on the Air base, but I heard the Marine one was amazing too.

One Response to Military Monday

I love how breezy you are about it 🙂 I definitely think it depends on the woman, the command, and every situation is SO different. You cracked me up with the “1/2 dozen kids” comment. Hilarious. Thanks for linking up, Alana!